Bacterial Cellulose Network from Kombucha Fermentation Impregnated with Emulsion-Polymerized Poly(methyl methacrylate) to Form Nanocomposite

The use of bio-based residues is one of the key indicators towards sustainable development goals. In this work, bacterial cellulose, a residue from the fermentation of kombucha tea, was tested as a reinforcing nanofiber network in an emulsion-polymerized poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA) matrix. The use of the nanofiber network is facilitating the formation of nanocomposites with well-dispersed nanofibers without using organic solvents or expensive methodologies. Moreover, the bacterial cellulose network structure can serve as a template for the emulsion polymerization of PMMA. The morphology, size, crystallinity, water uptake, and mechanical properties of the kombucha bacterial cellulose (KBC) network were studied. The results showed that KBC nanofibril diameters were ranging between 20-40 nm and the KBC was highly crystalline, >90%. The 3D network was lightweight and porous material, having a density of only 0.014 g/cm(3). Furthermore, the compressed KBC network had very good mechanical properties, the E-modulus was 8 GPa, and the tensile strength was 172 MPa. The prepared nanocomposites with a KBC concentration of 8 wt.% were translucent with uniform structure confirmed with scanning electron microscopy study, and furthermore, the KBC network was homogeneously impregnated with the PMMA matrix. The mechanical testing of the nanocomposite showed high stiffness compared to the neat PMMA. A simple simulation of the tensile strength was used to understand the limited strain and strength given by the bacterial cellulose network. The excellent properties of the final material demonstrate the capability of a residue of kombucha fermentation as an excellent nanofiber template for use in polymer nanocomposites

Orientation of polylactic acid–chitin nanocomposite films via combined calendering and uniaxial drawing: Effect on structure, mechanical, and thermal properties

The orientation of polymer composites is one way to increase the mechanical properties of the material in a desired direction. In this study, the aim was to orient chitin nanocrystal (ChNC)-reinforced poly(lactic acid) (PLA) nanocomposites by combining two techniques: calendering and solid-state drawing. The effect of orientation on thermal properties, crystallinity, degree of orientation, mechanical properties and microstructure was studied. The orientation affected the thermal and structural behavior of the nanocomposites. The degree of crystallinity increased from 8% for the isotropic compression-molded films to 53% for the nanocomposites drawn with the highest draw ratio. The wide-angle X-ray scattering results confirmed an orientation factor of 0.9 for the solid-state drawn nanocomposites. The mechanical properties of the oriented nanocomposite films were significantly improved by the orientation, and the pre-orientation achieved by film calendering showed very positive effects on solid-state drawn nanocomposites: The highest mechanical properties were achieved for pre-oriented nanocomposites. The stiffness increased from 2.3 to 4 GPa, the strength from 37 to 170 MPa, the elongation at break from 3 to 75%, and the work of fracture from 1 to 96 MJ/m3. This study demonstrates that the pre-orientation has positive effect on the orientation of the nanocomposites structure and that it is an extremely efficient means to produce films with high strength and toughness.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

Tunable vortex Majorana zero modes in LiFeAs superconductor

The recent realization of pristine Majorana zero modes (MZMs) in vortices of iron-based superconductors (FeSCs) provides a promising platform for long-sought-after fault-tolerant quantum computation. A large topological gap between the MZMs and the lowest excitations enabled detailed characterization of vortex MZMs in those materials. Despite those achievements, a practical implementation of topological quantum computation based on MZM braiding remains elusive in this new Majorana platform. Among the most pressing issues are the lack of controllable tuning methods for vortex MZMs and inhomogeneity of the FeSC Majorana compounds that destroys MZMs during the braiding process. Thus, the realization of tunable vortex MZMs in a truly homogeneous compound of stoichiometric composition and with a charge neutral cleavage surface is highly desirable. Here we demonstrate experimentally that the stoichiometric superconductor LiFeAs is a good candidate to overcome these two obstacles. Using scanning tunneling microscopy, we discover that the MZMs, which are absent on the natural surface, can appear in vortices influenced by native impurities. Our detailed analysis and model calculations clarify the mechanism of emergence of MZMs in this material, paving a way towards MZMs tunable by controllable methods such as electrostatic gating. The tunability of MZMs in this homogeneous material offers an unprecedented platform to manipulate and braid MZMs, the essential ingredients for topological quantum computation.Comment: 21 pages, 10 figures. Suggestions and comments are welcom

Two distinct superconducting states controlled by orientation of local wrinkles in LiFeAs

We observe two types of superconducting states controlled by orientations of local wrinkles on the surface of LiFeAs. Using scanning tunneling microscopy/spectroscopy, we find type-I wrinkles enlarge the superconducting gaps and enhance the transition temperature, whereas type-II wrinkles significantly suppress the superconducting gaps. The vortices on wrinkles show a C2 symmetry, indicating the strain effects on the wrinkles. A discontinuous switch of superconductivity occurs at the border between two different wrinkles. Our results demonstrate that the local strain effect could affect superconducting order parameter of LiFeAs with a possible Lifshitz transition, by alternating crystal structure in different directions.Comment: 21 pages, 9 figure

Cellulose-based Nanocomposites – The Relationship between Structure and Properties

Nanocellulose materials extracted from various types of biomass have recently attracted significant attention. Due to their remarkable mechanical properties, large surface area and biodegradability, they can be promising reinforcements in nanocomposites. Cellulose-based nanocomposites constitutive of nanocellulose reinforcements and biodegradable polymer matrices have great potential to be used in environmentally friendly applications to replace fossil-based materials. However, the challenge of controlling their nanoscale structure, especially achieving good dispersion of nanocellulose in hydrophobic polymer matrices, still poses significant obstacles to producing high-performance nanocomposites. Therefore, this thesis reports several methods for structural modification of cellulose-based nanocomposites toward the objectives of improving the dispersion of nanocellulose and enhancing the properties of the nanocomposites. The methods include in situ emulsion polymerization in the presence of nanocellulose, crosslinking of polymer matrix, grafting of polymer brushes to nanocellulose and drawing of nanocomposites to obtain aligned structures. The resulting mechanical, thermal and other related properties are investigated, and the relationship between structure and properties of the nanocomposites are discussed. To address the challenge of achieving good dispersion of nanocellulose in hydrophobic matrices, in situ emulsion polymerization of vinyl acetate monomer in the presence of cellulose nanocrystals has been developed. Microscopy results show that the in situ method improves the compatibility between nanocellulose and hydrophobic polymers, which consequently improves the dispersion of nanocellulose in the nanocomposites. Compared with direct mixed polymer/nanocellulose composites, the in situ synthesized nanocomposites exhibit higher stiffness and strength arising from their superior interphase volume, which is confirmed theoretically and experimentally. Crosslinking of partially hydrolyzed poly(vinyl acetate) by borate additives under different pH conditions has been studied to further enhance mechanical properties of the nanocomposites. Moreover, the “grafting to” modification method also helps to overcome this challenge. It is revealed that poly(ethylene glycol)-grafted cellulose nanofibers disperse better in poly(lactic acid) matrix than unmodified cellulose nanofibers, which is attributed to the improved compatibility and steric effect provided by the covalently grafted poly(ethylene glycol) brushes. To substantially enhance the unidirectional mechanical properties of cellulose-based nanocomposites, a highly aligned structure in the materials is obtained through the drawing process. Drawing conditions including temperature, speed and draw ratio show considerable effects on the mechanical and thermal properties of the nanocomposites. Furthermore, the aligned nanocomposites consisting of poly(lactic acid) matrix and ultra-low weight fraction of poly(ethylene glycol)-grafted cellulose nanofibers demonstrate competitive strength, superb toughness and interesting optical behaviors compared with other aligned nanocellulose-based materials reported in the literature, indicating their potential to be further developed for large-scale environmentally friendly applications

Cellulose-based Nanocomposites – The Relationship between Structure and Properties

Nanocellulose materials extracted from various types of biomass have recently attracted significant attention. Due to their remarkable mechanical properties, large surface area and biodegradability, they can be promising reinforcements in nanocomposites. Cellulose-based nanocomposites constitutive of nanocellulose reinforcements and biodegradable polymer matrices have great potential to be used in environmentally friendly applications to replace fossil-based materials. However, the challenge of controlling their nanoscale structure, especially achieving good dispersion of nanocellulose in hydrophobic polymer matrices, still poses significant obstacles to producing high-performance nanocomposites. Therefore, this thesis reports several methods for structural modification of cellulose-based nanocomposites toward the objectives of improving the dispersion of nanocellulose and enhancing the properties of the nanocomposites. The methods include in situ emulsion polymerization in the presence of nanocellulose, crosslinking of polymer matrix, grafting of polymer brushes to nanocellulose and drawing of nanocomposites to obtain aligned structures. The resulting mechanical, thermal and other related properties are investigated, and the relationship between structure and properties of the nanocomposites are discussed. To address the challenge of achieving good dispersion of nanocellulose in hydrophobic matrices, in situ emulsion polymerization of vinyl acetate monomer in the presence of cellulose nanocrystals has been developed. Microscopy results show that the in situ method improves the compatibility between nanocellulose and hydrophobic polymers, which consequently improves the dispersion of nanocellulose in the nanocomposites. Compared with direct mixed polymer/nanocellulose composites, the in situ synthesized nanocomposites exhibit higher stiffness and strength arising from their superior interphase volume, which is confirmed theoretically and experimentally. Crosslinking of partially hydrolyzed poly(vinyl acetate) by borate additives under different pH conditions has been studied to further enhance mechanical properties of the nanocomposites. Moreover, the “grafting to” modification method also helps to overcome this challenge. It is revealed that poly(ethylene glycol)-grafted cellulose nanofibers disperse better in poly(lactic acid) matrix than unmodified cellulose nanofibers, which is attributed to the improved compatibility and steric effect provided by the covalently grafted poly(ethylene glycol) brushes. To substantially enhance the unidirectional mechanical properties of cellulose-based nanocomposites, a highly aligned structure in the materials is obtained through the drawing process. Drawing conditions including temperature, speed and draw ratio show considerable effects on the mechanical and thermal properties of the nanocomposites. Furthermore, the aligned nanocomposites consisting of poly(lactic acid) matrix and ultra-low weight fraction of poly(ethylene glycol)-grafted cellulose nanofibers demonstrate competitive strength, superb toughness and interesting optical behaviors compared with other aligned nanocellulose-based materials reported in the literature, indicating their potential to be further developed for large-scale environmentally friendly applications

Learngene: From Open-World to Your Learning Task

Although deep learning has made significant progress on fixed large-scale datasets, it typically encounters challenges regarding improperly detecting unknown/unseen classes in the open-world scenario, over-parametrized, and overfitting small samples. Since biological systems can overcome the above difficulties very well, individuals inherit an innate gene from collective creatures that have evolved over hundreds of millions of years and then learn new skills through few examples. Inspired by this, we propose a practical collective-individual paradigm where an evolution (expandable) network is trained on sequential tasks and then recognize unknown classes in real-world. Moreover, the learngene, i.e., the gene for learning initialization rules of the target model, is proposed to inherit the meta-knowledge from the collective model and reconstruct a lightweight individual model on the target task. Particularly, a novel criterion is proposed to discover learngene in the collective model, according to the gradient information. Finally, the individual model is trained only with few samples on the target learning tasks. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach in an extensive empirical study and theoretical analysis.Comment: To be appeared in AAAI-2

Crosslinked polyvinyl acetate reinforced with cellulose nanocrystals – : Characterization of structure and mechanical properties

The structure of cellulose based nanocomposites influences their final mechanical properties significantly. Obtaining good dispersion of hydrophilic nanocellulose materials in hydrophobic polymer matrix is challenging. Here two unique methods were developed to improve the dispersion of cellulose nanocrystals (CNC) in polyvinyl acetate (PVAc) matrix. One is in-situ polymerization of vinyl acetate in the presence of CNCs, and the other one is crosslinking of PVAc by sodium tetraborate (Borax), which restricts the movement of CNCs during the drying process. The results from atomic force microscopy (AFM) show that the in-situ CNC/PVAc emulsion has much better dispersion than the one produced by stirring. Moreover, the mechanical characterization indicates that the in-situ composite with 10 wt% CNC has higher strength compared to the stirred composite with the same CNC concentration. The mechanical properties of crosslinked PVAc materials can be varied by changing the pH and may be attributed to differences of the crosslinking degree. Further investigations of the restriction effect caused by borax are needed.Godkänd; 2015; 20160331 (shigen